Good news amidst bad

Like an unsettling feeling when you wake up in the morning, bad news in its many forms comes, reminding us that recession has landed on our shores. We are supposed to deal with every bit of bad news with either a grain of salt or with a steely resolve to help the country do something about it.

It is no comfort to be reminded of a witty but worrisome saying which distinguishes “recession” from “depression.” Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours!

Depression has come down on thousands of workers from a prestigious IT-related company which was forced to lay off its workers due to low demand from its clients worldwide.

That’s why good news always comes as a whiff of fresh air on an otherwise spoiled morning this part of the city. It is good news enough to hear that an expressway will be built from Mindanao Avenue to North Luzon Expressway (NLEX), giving us the bright prospects of being freed from heavy traffic in EDSA Balintawak with an alternative entry – exit to NLEX via Mindanao avenue.

Now I know that after a power lunch at Trinoma or SM City, I can still catch – and watch – the breathtaking sunset on my way to Subic. All I need to do is enter the future NLEX toll booth on Mindanao Ave., and then have the exhilarating ride of my life through the 84-km. NLEX which is connected seamlessly with the 94-km. Subic Clark Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX).

But I have to wait 12 months to enjoy that welcome prospect!

Meantime, construction along Mindanao Ave. will soon begin in earnest, after resolving all issues related to right-of-way, the usual pre-construction ingredient in infrastructure building. What does this mean to the environs on the avenue and beyond it? MNTC officials said more than a thousand jobs – from direct and indirect labor – will be created by building this 2.7 km alone.

For starters, that’s great news, in my book. And kudos to the folks at MNTC for their continued desire to expand the breadth and reach of their tollway business. This builder of the world-class expressway, by the way, is now majority-owned by Metro Pacific Infrastructure Corp., a unit of Metro Pacific Investment Corporation (MPIC), after buying the shares of the Lopez Family in MNTC.

With my homespun economics, I know that a thousand jobs will have immediate effects on the workers’ families, and will have a multiplier effect on the local economy. A man with a job will have a disposable income which he will use to buy goods and services. This newfound purchasing power, however modest, stimulates the local economy, formal and “underground”.

 To this underground economy belong the sari-sari store owner who would put up a makeshift shop near the construction sites, the highly mobile fish ball vendor, and street smart sellers to cater to the simple pleasures of the common folk. Even these little businesses create new jobs.

 Allied industries will benefit from even the littlest road construction. For one, the cement industry, long bogged down by low demand and by a threat of unfair competition from “dumped” cement imports, will perk up. The steel and iron industry will similarly be stimulated. Again, this means more jobs.

I do not intend to lecture on Economics 101, but this one thing I know: Every infrastructure project, one of the hallmarks of the ten-point agenda of President Arroyo, stimulates allied industries, creates jobs, places food on the table, feeds hundreds of thousands of hungry mouths – and, somehow, makes life more bearable.

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My partner and I had a most enjoyable Valentine’s Day treat — listening to Cocoy Laurel sing immortal love songs with the sweeping music of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of music director Rodel F. Colmenar.

Cocoy delighted the audience at Teatrino in Greenhills with his renditions of, among others, “My Funny Valentine,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Le Vie En Rose,” and his original composition, “If I Were in the Sky.”

His sister Iwi Laurel, and nieces Nicole Laurel Asensio and Denise Sanz Laurel, shared the limelight with Cocoy. In the audience was Cocoy’s mother Celia Diaz Laurel, beautiful in a bright red gown, and it was most touching how Cocoy showered beautiful words of praise and love on her.

Toots Tolentino, an amiable public relations man, told me that Cocoy “lives and breathes in the world of art, an epitome of a true performing artist – whose career has spanned many years of sheer dedication and hard work.”

Cocoy is not new in the concert scene as in the ’70s he performed in “Cocoy Live” at the Araneta Coliseum; “Cocoy Live 2” at the Meralco Theater, and did an all-Spanish concert, “Te Quiero” at the Music Museum in 2000; “Journeys of the Heart” at the NBC Tent (2002), “Cocoy Laurel in Concert” at the CCP (2007) where he premiered six of his original compositions, and “Cocoy Laurel at the Teatrino (2008). He was the choice of Claude Michel Schonberg to be the main soloist in the “The Music of Alain Boubil and Claude Michel Schonbert in Concert,” singing the arias of Valjean in “Les Miserables” and the Engineer in “Miss Saigon.”

Theater goers, Toots told me, will remember Cocoy in Repertory Philippines musicals such as “The Fantastiks,” “Guys and Dolls,” “West Side Story,” “Camelot,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” and “Sweeney Todd.” Recently he starred in Ryan Cayabyab’s “Ang Mapaghimalang Birhen ng Caysasay” under the direction of Nestor Torre.

One unforgettable milestone in Cocoy’s life was his international exposure in “Miss Saigon” in London and later in Sydney where he received rare reviews in many periodicals of Australia.

My email: [email protected]